Japanese owned car companies made a killing

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American cars were heaped while Japanese cars reaped the benefits of a government incentive program.

A majority of 700,000 new car sales attributed to the Cash for Clunkers program went to Japanese owned companies.

The Toyota Corolla was the most popular new vehicle purchased under the program. The Honda Civic, Toyota Camry and Ford Focus held the next three top spots. All four are built in the United States.

If US made Japanese cars dominated the sales charts, good ol’ fashioned American cars ruled the junk heap.

American companies accounted for all the top-10 traded-in vehicles. The Ford Explorer four-wheel-drive was the most popular, followed by the Ford F-150 Pickup two-wheel-drive, the Jeep Grand Cherokee four-wheel-drive and Ford Explorer two-wheel-drive.

The government said 84 percent of the trade-ins were trucks and 59 percent of the new vehicles were passenger cars. New vehicles bought through Cash for Clunkers had an average fuel-efficiency of 24.9 miles per gallon, compared with an average of 15.8 mpg for trade-ins, a 58 percent improvement.

The government, releasing final data on the car incentives, said Wednesday that dealers submitted 690,114 sales totaling $2.88 billion, bringing the program to a close under its $3 billion budget. Illinois dealerships garnered about $144 million from the program.